Voice, Democracy and the Future of Reform

This is a guest post by Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis, authors of The Failure of the Voice Referendum and the Future of Australian Democracy

Don’t be fooled by the silence. Australia is still catching its breath after the defeat of the Voice referendum in October 2023. The rejection of the proposal to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution through an Indigenous Voice was an historic constitutional and political moment. This was not only because of its outcome, but for what the process and the vote revealed about the health of our democracy.

In this new edited book, The Failure of the Voice Referendum and the Future of Australian Democracy, we have brought together a diverse range of perspectives, including experts and people involved in different ways throughout the campaign, to explore what happened. We examine how the campaign was conducted, why it failed and what it means for the future of reform in this country. The book is not a lament; it is a sober analysis aimed at rebuilding the path to reform. The different chapters trace how Australia reached this point and how we might still chart a path forward towards a more just, representative democracy.

The air of democracy in Australia

In her recent Oration for the Centre for Public Integrity, Professor Davis wrote that when Indigenous voices fall silent, ‘the democracy air has already gone bad’. The referendum defeat did not merely stop a proposal; it exposed how fragile our democratic oxygen has become. Disinformation flourished, civic understanding faltered and legitimate demands for structural inclusion were reframed as threats to unity. The failure of the Voice has left Australia in a worse position than before, stripping away even the tentative momentum towards inclusive structural change that the Uluru Statement from the Heart had begun to build.

Without a constitutionally protected Voice, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples remain dependent on governments that can – and do – shift direction with each election. Programs are dismantled, advisory bodies disbanded and consultation reduced to formality. Serious policy failures – including in relation to land rights, criminal justice and human rights abuses – continue unchecked. Without a Voice, the policies in these areas are uninformed by those who must live with them, and unaccountable back to them. The loss of the referendum did not restore stability; it re-exposed the volatility of policymaking that First Nations communities know too well.

A new note from Victoria

The post-referendum landscape is paradoxical. Public life has become quieter about First Nations issues, but this silence conceals deeper fractures. The loss emboldened those who would prefer Indigenous perspectives to remain marginal. Across the country, we have seen pushback against Acknowledgments of Country, flag protocols and even the language of ‘First Nations’. The government is pursuing an agenda of economic empowerment and economic ‘partnership’ that leaves largely unanswered questions about inclusive and structural change.

That is why the developments in Victoria over the past months matter so profoundly. The Victorian Government and the First Peoples’ Assembly have concluded the first Statewide Treaty, which is now passed into law through the Statewide Treaty Act. This is the first outcome in the Statewide treaty negotiations, the process for which has spanned almost a decade. It is significant that the first outcome of that process was to establish a permanent Indigenous representative body – Gellung Warl – to advise on, co-design and negotiate programs affecting Aboriginal Victorians.

This represents a significant advance: a state government acknowledging that democracy functions best when it listens. Victoria is not the first state to make this advance, with the treaty negotiations following the changes in South Australia when it introduced the First Nations Voice, which came into effect in 2024.

Victoria’s move is an initial, albeit partial answer to the referendum’s failure. It demonstrates that structural reform remains possible and that listening can be institutionalised even in the face of national rejection. The Statewide Treaty Act re-centres what the Voice campaign was always about: integrity and accountability in government decision-making. A permanent, representative First Nations body is not a symbolic gesture; it is the machinery through which policy becomes more just and more effective. Of course, there are limits and fragilities with the Victorian model, and it will ultimately rely on the ongoing political goodwill of the government, which, as Aunty Jill Gallagher AO reminds us in her chapter in this book, reinforces the need for the national conversation about Voice to once again be reignited.

Learning from the campaign

Our book examines the referendum loss not as an isolated and never to be returned to political failure, but as a mirror of broader concerns with the health of Australian democracy, particularly as it is practised in Indigenous affairs. The Voice campaign revealed what happens when truth-telling is treated as partisanship, when social media amplifies fear and when expert evidence is drowned out by slogans. It exposed how shallow our civics literacy has become and how little trust exists between institutions and the communities they are meant to serve.

But it also revealed enduring hope. More than six million Australians voted ‘Yes’. Despite scaremongering and disinformation that Indigenous people did not support the proposal, in many remote Aboriginal communities – Wadeye, Maningrida, the Tiwi Islands – support for the Voice exceeded 80%.

As the many chapters in this book demonstrate, the will for reform, for recognition, for partnership, has not evaporated. It remains, waiting for political courage to meet it.

The road ahead

If the referendum was a rupture, Victoria’s treaty process is the country’s first experiment in repair. It shows how democratic structures can be reshaped to include those they once excluded. It proves that the principles of Voice, Treaty and Truth remain viable and urgent.

Australia’s first Indigenous person to hold the Indigenous Australians portfolio, the Hon. Ken Wyatt said in the Productivity Commission’s annual Mokak Oration, the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its call for Voice, Treaty and Truth remain ‘our moral compass’ in Indigenous affairs, which suffer from government decisions ‘shackled by inertia’.

But progress will depend on whether Australia as a whole is willing to learn the lessons of 2023: that silence is not neutrality, that misinformation corrodes democracy from within, and that listening is not a concession – it is a democratic necessity.

The Failure of the Voice Referendum and the Future of Australian Democracy invites Australians and all those interested in democracy and reform, to look unflinchingly at the Voice referendum – its history, its campaign and its aftermath – and to ask: what kind of democracy do we want now?

The contributors to this book offer no easy answers, but we all refuse to accept silence as final.